When the politics of a murder mystery are more interesting than the mystery, there’s a bit of a problem. The Phantom of Crestwood involves a woman of the world (Karen Morley) blackmailing her former lovers so she can get out of the professional mistress life. Why’s it so easy to blackmail them? They’ve all been selling short during the Depression in order to profit off the miseries of the working man.

The film starts much better than it finishes, though Henry W. Gerrard’s photography is fantastic throughout. Director Ruben kind of runs out of interesting things to do in the second half. There’s a technically interesting gimmick for flashbacks, but the whole flashback structure of the murder investigation doesn’t work. Many cast members never become suspects, even though the script frequently casts doubts about them.

There’s a lot of good acting to carry the film–it only really gets tiresome in the last ten minutes or so, when there’s the big race for time sequence. Morley’s wonderful in the lead. Crestwood lionizes the crooks–a suspected murderer (Ricardo Cortez) ends up doing the investigating, with Sam Hardy as his sidekick. Both of them are excellent and play quite well off each other. And Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher. He’s great.

Unfortunately, there are bad performances too. Matty Kemp, Ivan F. Simpson and, especially, Pauline Frederick are awful. Between their weak performances in essential roles and the lackluster finish, Crestwood never gets near what the excellent first twenty minutes promises.

It’s too bad.

ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by J. Walter Ruben; screenplay by Bartlett Cormack, based on a story by Cormack and Ruben; director of photography, Henry W. Gerrard; edited by Archie Marshek; released by RKO Radio Pictures.

It’s hard not to be, at least, somewhat impressed with The Vampire Bat, if only because it came out in 1933 as a knockoff Universal horror picture. Except at this point, there’d only been Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. The Vampire Bat brilliantly resembles a Universal horror picture in every way but the filmmaking. There’s the burgomaster, played by the same guy as in Frankenstein (Lionel Belmore). Dwight Frye plays a role somewhat similar to Renfield. It’s only the three principles who don’t really fit–and Lionel Atwill would go on to do a lot of Universal horror pictures.

The screenwriter Lowe eventually did write a Universal horror picture. It took him eleven years, but he wrote House of Frankenstein.

It’s a knockoff, but it’s an effective knockoff made on a lower budget without music. By Bride of Frankenstein, in 1935, music was very important in the Universal horror formula. Seeing one of these pictures without the music is very interesting–it’s a transitory step, but made by a different studio.

The film was shot on the Universal backlot at night. But the set isn’t directed like it’s a Universal horror picture. Frank R. Strayer had time to do a lot of crane shots. His interior shots aren’t impressive (way too much headroom), but the exteriors and transition shots, it looks like Curtiz shot it during his exterior movement phase.

It distracts the viewer from realizing he or she has never seen the exterior of Lionel Atwill’s house. It’s referred to as the castle, but it’s never shown.

Atwill is pretty bad. He would go on to develop a certain character and he hasn’t gotten to it here. Fay Wray’s in it, just before Kong. They don’t use her much. She’s the girl in peril, but only a little bit. The movie only runs sixty-five minutes. She’s second-billed and it’s like they couldn’t get her to stay up late to shoot.

The most interesting thing is Melvyn Douglas, being someone who went on to greater fame. He’s fantastic in this film. He’s very aware of what film he’s in, almost mugging for the viewer when he has to deliver crazy lines–actually, when the other actors deliver the crazy lines to him, you can feel his understanding of how absurd the viewer feels watching the exchange.

Thinking about The Vampire Bat at all, it collapses–which isn’t to say it holds up. It’s an interesting debacle. It ends on a joke and it’s one of the most unfunny jokes you could end on. There’s a whole comic element to the film. Eburne’s played for laughs and it makes no sense.

For a sixty-five minute film to be as meandering and as loosely constructed as this one, it’s impressive.